Faculty Handbook

VIII. M. BACKGROUND CHECKS

(Source: Approved by CAPP, August 29, 2014)

The College is committed to ensuring that criminal background checks are done on any Reed faculty member, staff member or student (including those doing research or outreach) who has unsupervised direct contact with individuals under 16 years of age for the purposes of Reed research, coursework, or Reed-sponsored activities.

The College requires criminal background checks of all researchers who will have any unsupervised direct contact with children. This requirement may be waived when the work is being done at an external site that has its own process for conducting background checks (e.g., Portland Public Schools). The Institutional Review Board’s review process for research involving minors will include this requirement as part of the approval process.

For other situations, such as students working in outreach projects, the project organizer (e.g. professor of the relevant class, outreach coordinator for the relevant project) will either ensure that the organization involved is itself committed to conduct such criminal background checks as part of its normal procedures (and keep records of such commitments), or oversee such checks themselves.

A third party (including the Dean of Faculty, and not including the relevant supervisor, faculty member, outreach coordinator, etc.) will vet the results of the background checks if criminal offenses are revealed. The following offenses will in most cases preclude work with children: offenses including violence, weapons, sex, or children (e.g., endangerment, neglect).

In addition, there are a small number of contexts for which drug and alcohol offenses would be problematic (e.g., working in a substance abuse treatment facility); for those cases, the course instructor/supervisor will make it clear through a special notation on the background check form that drug and alcohol offenses should also be considered.

Any questions will be discussed with the relevant supervisor, faculty member, outreach coordinator, etc., in general terms, without revealing the identity of any person involved.

Human Resources will organize the background checks performed by the College. Further information on these checks is available from Human Resources.